We finally come back to estimating the basic reproduction number \(R_0\) . The above framework provides us with a methodology to consistently estimate the reproduction number without making parametric statements about the incubation period or the generation time. From (REF ) it is evident that we require next to an estimator for \(\varphi _G\)  also an estimate \(\hat{r}_n\)  of the growth rate of the expected incidence. In [1]} the exponential growth rate of the reported numbers is estimated to be \(r=0.14\) . But, strictly speaking, what we need here is the growth rate of the infection numbers which is (intuitively speaking) very similar but can be different due to under-reporting and delays. The estimator is specified in the following corollary, the proof of which can also be found in Section REF  in the Appendix.
